


What Was, What Is

by lostsometime



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Playing with game mechanics for fun & profit, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 13:43:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15144338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostsometime/pseuds/lostsometime
Summary: Caleb would have been able to stop himself from causing collateral damage with his spells, once.  He can't now.





	What Was, What Is

The only direction they get from the villagers who hired them to take care of a local bandit problem is that they think the bandits have probably holed up somewhere in the cave system of the nearby mountains.  “Why is it always caves?” Jester grumbles as they hike through the underbrush.  “Why don’t bandits ever live in, like, little houses?” 

“Like mushroom houses?” Beau’s voice dances the line between pretended indifference and a sort of indulgent fondness.

Jester gasps, delighted.  “Yes, yes, definitely mushroom houses!  Why _not_ mushroom houses?  Why is it always stinky caves?”

Beau doesn’t get a chance to respond before they come through the treeline and walk right into the bandits’ camp.  Rather than the deep, twisting tunnels they expected, they find themselves at the edge of a broad and relatively shallow cavern.  The “cave” isn’t much more than a low overhang of rock offering a bit of shelter from the elements, and as the Mighty Nein emerge from the forest, they find a good dozen rough-looking bandits staring at them.

They stare at the bandits for a moment.  The bandits stare at them.  Then a crossbow bolt hits a tree, just inches from Fjord’s head, and the area erupts into chaos.  The Nein are outnumbered, but not outmatched.  Caleb watches as Beauregard knocks one into another with her staff, sweeping the legs out from under a third as she spins.  He catches Nott, taking cover in the trees and sniping the men who are distracted by fighting off Fjord’s falchion and Mollymauk’s scimitars.  Yasha is harrying three at once, and he hears the faint chime of Jester’s _Toll the Dead._ Caleb takes in the whole of the battlefield in the space of a breath, thinking through the list of spells available to him.  He does some quick mental calculations, eyeballing the distance between himself and the nearest two bandits and angling his body away from the rest of the Nein.  Fifteen feet.  That should catch both enemies, he thinks, and he begins to speak the incantation for _Burning Hands_ , touching his thumbs together.  There is a shimmer in the corner of his vision, and in the instant between finishing the spell and having it take effect, Caleb watches Mollymauk appear next to the larger bandit, his scimitars a whirl of color and light and too close, far too close.

He shouts “No!” but it’s too late to call the magic back.  It’s out of his hands now, literally, turning to flame as it leaps from his fingertips, and Caleb makes a half-remembered motion with one hand, like pulling the reins on a stubborn horse.  He knows, he _knows_ that Caleb-That-Was could do it.  Caleb-That-Was could fill an entire field with fire and leave himself and his friends untouched, shunting away even the smoke and superheated air.  He knows how it’s done; he _remembers_ doing it, but he was a different person then, and the gap between Caleb-That-Was and Caleb-That-Is has never felt so stark as it does in this moment.

The fire rolls over Mollymauk and his opponent like a wave, stopping their duel as he and his assailant are momentarily blinded by the flames.  Molly gives a shout, more surprise than pain in his voice, but Caleb doesn’t hear it.  Caleb is hearing shrieking in his mind.  Caleb can’t tell the difference between the screams in his head and the screams in the cave.  Caleb is on his knees in the dirt, gazing absently into space as the fire burns itself out against the far wall.

Molly’s fight doesn’t last too much longer – his foe was burned far worse than he was, and it doesn’t take him long to finish him off.  He’s turning to another bandit behind him when the man goes down, one of Nott’s crossbow bolts sprouting from his skull.  Fjord and Beau have ganged up on the last two, hemming them in against the wall.  He looks around for Jester and Caleb, finds Jester with her hand-axe out and a dimpled grin, and finds Caleb –

_\-  Caleb-That-Is –_

still on the ground.  The distant look on his face is familiar, and brings to mind another cave, another fight, another blast of fire.  He starts towards him but Nott beats him there, gently shaking his shoulder and softly calling his name.  He seems to move almost in slow-motion but he does, ultimately, move.  He blinks slowly until Nott’s face clarifies in his field of vision, realizes she’s pressing her flask into one of his hands.  He gulps down several mouthfuls before he feels capable of speech and leans his forehead against her shoulder, the perfect height now with him on his knees.

“I didn’t… I didn’t mean…”

“It’s okay, Caleb. You’re okay,” Nott murmurs.

“No, no, I… I hurt… I burned… I didn’t mean to, I swear, I didn’t –" One hand comes up to clutch at his own hair, the very picture of distress, and Nott tries to coax him into holding onto her, instead. He lifts his head and looks into her eyes, a kind of feverish desperation in his gaze.  “Mollymauk.” 

Caleb thinks that he should turn and look for Molly. Caleb thinks that he doesn’t want to look. Caleb thinks that if he turns and sees the charred corpse of Mollymauk Tealeaf, he will break again, for good this time. “Is he – Did he – Is he alive?”

Nott pats at his hands, saying “He’s fine, he’s fine, I can – _MOLLY!_ ”  She shouts for him, unwilling to leave Caleb’s side, and Molly hastens over.

“Everything all right over here?”

“Mollymauk!  You are, are, you are all right?  You didn’t... _I_ didn’t… it’s not… you are not hurt?”  Caleb turns that frantic look on Molly, taking in the singed patches on his shirt, the trickle of blood from activating his swords, the ash in his hair, and finally settling on his blessedly unburned face.

Molly grins at him.  “Fire resistant, remember?” 

Caleb feels the tension in him ease like a retreating tide, leaving a feeling of tremendous relief and a shaky post-battle weakness in its wake.  He lets himself slump over, taking deep, shuddering breaths and burying his face in his trembling hands.  “Thank you, _thank you_ ,” he murmurs, not sure who the words are meant for but unable to leave his gratitude unspoken.  He takes a moment to push away the memories of fire and smoke, replacing them with the image of Mollymauk’s smiling face, the feeling of Nott’s hands in his hair, the tangle of distant voices he can recognize as his friends. 

Finally, he pulls himself to his feet.  Nott reaches up and tucks her hand into his.  On his other side, Molly crooks an elbow like he’s offering his arm to lean on.  It’s such an incongruously formal gesture that it surprises a laugh out of him, and Caleb catches himself smiling as he lets his friends lead him back out into the sunlight.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't write this intending to be shippy, but in review I can see that it can absolutely be read as Caleb/Molly. I'm not sure if I should adjust the tags to cover that or leave it as-is. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!


End file.
